u/AnxiousConfidence116

Bookkeepers serving sole props and freelancers under $100K revenue: What are you using? QBO Simple Start is getting expensive for clients at that size and I’m wondering what others are doing. Spreadsheets? Wave? Something else?

The messy files usually tell on themselves. It’s the “mostly fine” ones that make me nervous...

I’m talking about files where the P&L looks believable, nothing is wildly negative, the client says reconciliation is “caught up,” and at first glance you think maybe this is just a light catch-up. Then you dig in and find stuff like:

• Duplicate transactions from bank feed + manual entries
• Old unreconciled months hiding behind newer reconciled ones
• OBE or Retained Earnings being used as a junk drawer
• Balances that only “work” because multiple mistakes are offsetting each other

Those are the files I dread most because they look good enough to make everyone underestimate the damage.

Messy books are obvious.
Fake-clean books are surprise time sinks.

Anybody else have a QBO file that looked normal until you started pulling on one thread and the whole thing fell apart?

I'm an EA who's done way too many QBO cleanups :) and I stopped guessing at scope a long time ago. Here's the quick diagnostic that I run on every new file before I quote:

6 checks:

1. Chart of Accounts bloat - 400 accounts with three versions of "Office Supplies" means nobody's been maintaining structure.
2. Reconciliation Discrepancies account + last reconciled date on every bank/CC. Unreconciled since 2023? Price accordingly.
3. Uncategorized Income / Uncategorized Expense / Ask My Accountant - Pull a report filtered to these. Line count = the beginning of your transaction-level workload.
4. Opening Balance Equity - Should be $0. If it's not, someone set up accounts the lazy way or didn't finish something. Tells you a lot about who's been touching the file.
5. Undeposited Funds - Stale balance? You've got duplicate income or payments that never got matched to deposits.
6. A/R + A/P aging, sorted for negatives - Negative AR = payments without invoices or duplicates. Negative AP = double-paid bills or floating vendor credits.

Rule of thumb: If 3+ of these are ugly = full cleanup, not a tune-up/catch-up. Quote it that way upfront and clients respect the scope instead of fighting it.

What does everyone else check first? Always looking to improve my processes.